I NEVER enjoy having to find t fault wIth a book, and when the au- thor is someone I have met and like, I j hate It. Lord David Cecil possesses all the qualifications for writing a first-class hiography of Max Beerbohm-an un- derstanding love of his hero, the indus- try and scholarship to insure that the facts are both correct and complete- but his "Max" (Houghton Mifflin) is not nearly so good a book as it could have been. What he has published should, I feel, have been Ins first draft, which he should then have spent an- other six months condensIng to at least half its present volume. As it is, he has given us .:1 ponderous, repetitious Vic- torian tome of four hundred and nine- ty-six densel} printed pages. So expan- sive a commemoration is singularly un,;uited to the man who once coun- selled a prospective biographer thus: l\IIy gifts are small. I've used them very well and discreetly, never straining them; and the result is that I've made a charming little reputation. But this reputation is a frail plant. Don't over- attend to it, gardener Lynch! Don't drench it and deluge it! The contents of a quite small watering-can will be quite enough. rrhis I take to be superfluous counsel I find much reassurance and comfort in your phrase, "a little book." Oh, keep it little !-in due pro- portion to its theme. \Vith my other ohjection, I have learned, I can expect very fevv people in this age to agree, hut I must state it, however eccentric it may seem. I consider the publica- tion of long extracts from Max's letters to Florence a violation of personal privacy for wInch I can see no justi- fication whatever. Max seems to have destroyed all her let- ters to him-an indication, surely, that he wished their correspondence to remain private. There may be somL eXCUse for disregarding the wishes of a dead man- though I do not myself con- sider it valid-if the contents of his private papers reveal important aspects of his life BOOKS One of the Family and character, hitherto unsuspected, hut Max's letters to Florence tell us nothing we could not learn from pub- lic sourCeS. Furthermore, to a de- tached reader, nearly all love letters are either boring or embarrassing. Letters between friends who share the s.:une interests and jokes can be most enter- taining, as are Max's letters to Reggie Turner, superbly edited by Mr. Rupert Hart-Davis (Lippincott), and pub- lished, incidentally, with Max's consent on condItion that certain excisions be Inade. But the noises of erotic devotion, however musical they may sound in the ears of the couple concerned, can seldonl stir a third party's. As one would expect, there is nothing scan- dalous or shameful about Max the lover, only a certain kittenish ness, harlnless enough-but to me, at any rate, shy-making. ()ne more criticism, or, rather, sug- gestion. \Vhen I read biographies, I find Inyself constantly having to turn hack and hunt for the date of the event I dm reading about. I wish that when they print a biography publishers would make it their practice to Set at the top of each page at least the veal with which it is concel ned. Mr. S. K. Behrlnan's "Portrait of ----- .. '\ y I I " ,. .. 227 Max," published bv Random House some five years ago, in th ree hundred and four pages of wIdely spaced print, is a better hook than Lord David Cecil's, but since he confined himself to descrihing his encounters with Beer- ho}un and made no attempt at a full biography, his task was of course a very much easier one. I am astonished to find both Mr. Behrman and Lord 1)a vid Cecil talking of Max as a man who deliberately adopted and cultivated a mask. To say that a man wears a mask is to say that the person as he ap- pears to be to others, perhaps even to himself, differs from the person he really is. He may wear one for various reasons. He may simply be a crook, lIke the man who professes love to lonely spinsters in order to swindle them out of their savings. He may he someone who is afraid or ashamed of certain aspects of his nature, which he therefore tries to hide from other& and himself. Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in th e hope of finding the one which suits them-the one, in fact, which is not a mclsk. Another possibility is described in BeLrbohm's story "The Happy Hypo- crite": in order to win the heart of a r " t " ,. \ --- f ^- , ! ItfIII LJ , I \ ,. ':; .. . ; '"&. 1 ((I'll thank yúu to leave my taste tn art out of this!"